Breastfeeding Toolkit

Providing Education on Breastfeeding

Many pregnant women are not encouraged to breastfeed their baby. As health providers, we need to strive to encourage more mothers to breastfeed. As soon as a woman begins her prenatal care, breastfeeding education should be provided consistently and continuously during the prenatal visits.

Healthy child development habits begin before birth. One proven strategy for reducing the risk of obesity early in life is to support breastfeeding. Experts agree we need to increase the number of health care facilities that encourage mothers to:

feed their babies breast milk only for the first six months of life, and

start feeding solid foods to their babies at six months while continuing to breastfeed until the 12th month.